Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion.The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.

Jhumpa Lahiri brings to her terrifically poignant first novel the remarkable powers of emotion. The Namesake enriches and expands on her signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and the tangled ties between generations. The Namesake journeys with the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in India through their fraught transformation into Americans. Ashoke Ganguli arrives in Massachusetts at the end of the 1960s, shortly after his arranged marriage in Calcutta, to pursue an engineering degree. Unlike her new husband, Ashima Ganguli resists all things American and pines for her family back home. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the confusions of respecting old ways in the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his antic name. Lahiri follows Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching relationships. Spanning three decades and crossing continents, The Namesake is at every moment intimate, as Lahiri brilliantly swoops in on the perfect detail and revelatory emotion that open whole worlds in a phrase. Readers who flocked to Interpreter of Maladies will find The Namesake even more elegant, subtle, and deeply affecting.